Kathleen Middle School students lay wreaths on 52 veterans' graves

Christopher Guinn @cguinnnews

Monday

Nov 27, 2017 at 11:58 AMNov 27, 2017 at 12:19 PM

LAKELAND — Students and their families searched for 52 names, most etched into chunky, polished granite, others on grown-over marble and the oldest in cement so pockmarked the searchers had to touch the stone to read the shape of the letters.

At Griffin Cemetery on Sunday, on the stones bearing the names of the veterans of America's armed forces interred there, Kathleen Middle School students and their families laid simple wreaths, fresh with a heavy evergreen scent and bearing red ribbons.

The students who took their last day of the Thanksgiving break to wander through the cemetery were members of the school's Future Farmers of America; they and their club adviser hope to make this the first of an annual tradition.

Jenna Barefoot, an agriculture teacher, said she hopes the exercise will teach the children to have respect for their country, their elders, personal sacrifice and veterans, and to learn humility and service.

The names of known veterans buried in the rustic cemetery in Kathleen also are noted on a marker along Sleepy Hill Road at the front of the cemetery. The it was unveiled in May by Kenny Weberman, an Army veteran who researched the veterans buried there and raised money to build the monument.

The event was modeled on Wreaths Across America, a group that places wreaths on veterans graves at Arlington National Cemetery and over 1,200 other places American veterans are buried.

"I'm just happy we can give back," Barefoot said.

Among the students seeking the names was 6th grader Mikaylah Lampp, working alongside her mother Kristi. They were looking for another Lampp, Lonnie Henry Lampp, a World War I veteran, wondering whether they were related. They found out later they were: Lonnie is Mikaylah's great-great uncle, Kristi's husband's great uncle.

"This is a great thing they're doing," Kristi Lampp said of the students, "spending their last day of Thanksgiving break doing this."

As the children looked for names, they approached it like a scavenger hunt in a library. They were quiet, but shared with each other the names they had found or were looking for, and directing each other to sections of the park they might have remembered seeing the other's name.

But the adults noticed the effects of time, how even rock cannot protect against time.

Those who passed recently had well-groomed graves and many had personal effects and mementos propped against them. But many of those who died earlier had overgrown markers, or eroded gravestones, or in some cases no name at all, maybe just a heavy plinth that perhaps once held a statue.